J Van Damme

Social motives for drinking in students should not be neglected in efforts to decrease problematic drinking

High heavy drinking prevalence persists in students. Recently, drinking motivation received a lot of attention as an important determinant. Enhancement and coping motives are mostly positively related and conformity motives are mostly negatively related with heavy drinking. Relations are less clear for social motives. This study aimed at gaining more insight in the role of drinking motives in heavy drinking students. Overall, 15 897 Belgian university and college students (mean age: 20.7, SD = 2.6) anonymously participated in an online survey. Logistic regressions tested relationships between motives and problematic drinking (>weekly drinking, ≥monthly binge drinking and being at risk for problematic drinking by the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test [AUDIT]). Social motives had the highest prevalence, followed by enhancement, coping and conformity motives. Men engaged more in problematic drinking and reported more motives, except for coping. Enhancement, coping and social-motivated students have higher chances for problematic drinking, while the opposite is true for conformity-motivated students. Although this study found a similar ranking of motives as in other studies, a relationship between problematic drinking and all motives, including social motives, was revealed. This might indicate the different functions of social motives in heavy drinking in different cultures/sub-populations and countries. This finding is relevant for the development of interventions.

The role of adhesive F107 fimbriae and of SLT-IIv toxin in the pathogenesis of edema disease in pigs

Colonization of the small intestine and the excretion of a toxin are important steps in the pathogenesis of edema disease in pigs. Although much is known about the chemical and biological characteristics of SLT-IIv toxin, its mode of action and its genetic determinant, F107 fimbriae were only recently described as colonization factors. Here we summarize our current knowledge about the virulence factors F107 fimbriae and SLT-IIv toxin.

Disfluency: it is not always stuttering.

To the Editor : Disfluency refers to normal, abnormal, or ambiguous breaks in the continuity of producing phonologic, lexical, morphologic, and/or syntactic language units in oral speech (1). It appears to be common in neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and has been variously described as reduced or fast rate (2–4), deliberate paced rhythm (5), irregularities in speech rate and rhythm (6), sloppy or labored articulation (4), and stuttering (6). These divergent findings generally resulted from perceptual studies which, except for Alivuotila et al. (4), did not include control participants. Therefore, to further delineate disfluency in NF1, we calculated the frequency of disfluencies and measured speaking rate in a group of NF1 patients and controls, and looked for similarities with known fluency disorders. Patients were 30 NF1 adults, 15 males and 15 females, fulfilling the National Institutes of Health (NIH) diagnostic criteria for NF1. Controls included 30 age(p > 0.05) and gender-matched adults (p > 0.05) without NF1 who did not have speech-language disorders. Selected fragments from video-recorded spontaneous speech were subjected to an in-depth fluency analysis (Table S2, Supporting information). Disfluencies were classified as ‘stutter-like disfluencies’ (part-word repetitions, single-syllable word repetitions, and disrhythmic phonations) or ‘other disfluencies’ (interjections, revisions/abandoned utterances, and multisyllable/phrase repetitions) (7) and their frequency of occurrence was determined. Speaking rate was measured as both speech and articulation rate (i.e. the number of syllables per second with and without inclusion of pause intervals, respectively). Additionally, pauses were analyzed according to their number and duration, and a measure of articulation rate variation was calculated. The latter can be associated with the occurrence of rapid bursts of speech. Statistical analysis for comparison of NF1 patients and controls included two-way analyses of variance with ‘group’ and ‘gender’ as fixed factors (α = 0.05). As interaction terms were not significant, main effects were interpreted directly. Results (Table 1) showed that differences between NF1 adults and controls were especially marked for speaking rate. NF1 adults had a faster articulation rate, showed more articulation rate variation, and paused more and longer than controls. However, speech rate was similar between groups. Given the faster articulation rate, this seems contradictory, but can readily be explained. Speech rate is a function of articulation rate and pausing. As NF1 adults also Table 1. Results [mean and (SD)] of the in-depth fluency analysis

High-Speed Liquid Chromatography of PTH-Amino Acids

It is now generally accepted that the quickest and most sensitive method for the determination of PTH-amino acids is ‘reversed phase’ liquid chromatography on columns of either CN- or C18-bonded phase packing (1,2). Isocratic separations giving the best resolution on the routinely used 0.46 x 25 cm columns with 10 μ packing material can be achieved in 30 min (3) when carried out at elevated temperature (e.g. 64°). Gradient elution using a buffered aqueous solvent and increasing amounts of either methanol and/or acetonitrile reduce the analysis time to 20 min, also at ca 60°. We show in this paper that the technique of high-speed liquid chromatography, recently introduced (4), allows the gradient type of analysis to be carried out in 6 min, including the reequilibration of the column.